Two suggestions to achieve a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace

October 1, 2010

Fathi El-Shihibi

By Professor Fathi El-Shihibi

Even though I am
usually in the habit of seeking facts before reaching any
conclusions however after witnessing yet another round of
Arab-Israeli face to face negotiations that President Barak Obama,
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu along with President
Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian Prime
Minister Mahmud Abbas, ushered in with so much fanfare
unfortunately slides into apathy and lingers between political
tension and have hearted optimism, all I could think about was that
what peacemaking truly needs are the audacity of real hope and the
courage to transcend things that already are and dream of things
that never were and finding ways to get there .

These paraphrased
words from George Bernard Shaw's play "Back to Methuselah" that the
late President John F. Kenny reiterated in his speech to the Irish
Parliament in June 28th 1963, and the words that the current
President Barak Obama had chosen for the title of his inspirational
book, are words that the Palestinian and Israeli leadership and
negotiators truly need to internalize and live by but most
importantly act upon if they are truly serious about achieving an
enduring and lasting peace for this generation as well as future
generations. I don't know whether it is because of my growing older
and wiser yet more skeptical and complacent, my reaction to the
latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations under
the auspicious of the United States was somewhere in between "Oh
well better luck next time", if there ever going to be a more
opportune time as President Obama seemed to imply in his latest
speech at the United Nations, and "there has to be a better way to
do this right once and for all".

In between getting my
hopes up for a viable solution to the conflict and becoming
disillusioned every time smiles turn into sneers and the specter of
war God forbid, is once again unmasked, I have been busying myself
honing my political skills for the sake of making since of this
fifty two years stretch of conflict and conciliation to reach a
solution or solutions that would be accepted by both sides.

This long span of
time has also been interspersed by four major wars in 1948, 1956,
1967 and 1973 that cost countless lives on both sides and billions
in military hardware and armaments. This time I have decided to do
this on my own and trust my diplomatic acumen and political savvy
enough to try to unravel this seemingly complicated situation.

After a time of
serious thinking it finally dawned on me. What this process needs
is essentially two simultaneous and complementary approaches. The
first requires leaps of faith over the many hurdles standing in the
way of a lasting and enduring peace between the Palestinians and
the Israelis. The second involves discarding all other schemes to
achieve peaceful settlement that had proven once again to be
irreconcilable with contemporary realities and irreversible
circumstances on the ground. These realities include the Israeli
settlements in the West Bank, the changed status of Jerusalem since
the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and beyond and the threats by Hamas
(Islamic Zeal) that is in control of the Gaza Strip to undermine
any peace deals between Israel and the Palestinian authority in the
West Bank. If you don't know what I mean by my first proposition to
jump start the peace process by taking giant leaps of faith rather
than the usual baby steps and tiptoeing around the many urgent
issues I am actually getting to that.

The giant leaps I
have in mind are similar to those undertaken by the late Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat and the late Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak
Rabin not to mention the late Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir
and Menachem Began as well as The late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat,
the late King Husayn of Jordan and the late King Hasan of
Morocco.

The Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat took a giant yet risky leap when he decided
to bypass all the unnecessary details of peace making and opted
instead to go directly to Israel, deliver a speech before the
Israeli Knesset thereby breaking every taboo that kept his
predecessor and many other Arab leaders shackled for years.

Another similar leap
was the one taken by the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat when he
overcame the taboo of face to face negotiations with the Israelis
and therefore paved the way for the Oslo Accords and the signing of
a peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israelis on the
front lawn of the White house during the Clinton Administration.
While King Husayn saw the wisdom of signing a peace treaty with
Israel despite the looming threat of a backlash against him and his
government, King Hasan of Morocco was the architect behind the
direct negotiations between the two adversaries. Daring ventures
and leaps of faith such as these could save both sides the agony of
haggling over minor issues and spare them countless years of poring
over unnecessary details.

The assassination of
President Sadat precisely because of his audacious approach was
truly a tragedy that befell a man who had the vision and the
courage to look beyond the immediate circumstances including at the
time an existing state of war between Egypt and Israel and instead
reached out to a future that others could not imagine let alone
contemplate or attempt to realize. When leaders do things that are
similar to what Sadat did they are not only rising above their
immediate circumstances and constraints but instead reach out to
reconcile vision with reality sometimes at the expense of their own
safety and well being. This was also the case with the Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who also took a leap of faith when he
decided to conduct direct negotiations with the Palestinians. Rabin
like Sadat was a military man who along with the Egyptian President
had the courage to, as the bible says "beaten their swords into
plowshares" and transformed themselves from warriors to peace
makers. Sadly Rabin was also assassinated by forces similar to
those that issued a fatwa or religious decree which condemned Sadat
to death and that aim to continue along a path of violent
confrontations.

The lingering threat
of violence directed at those who truly had their peoples' well
being at heart and the sincerest desires to overcome hatred and
violence is truly in and for itself a tragedy plaguing humanity
since times immemorial. This tragic reality continues to hang over
the heads of those leaders who dare challenge the status quo and
risk exposure to violent backlash or worse violent retaliation.

The second approach
that I propose to hopefully overcome the many hurdles and a
challenges standing in the way of a permanent peace deal is one
that could be described as a pyramidal method or approach to
problem solving. If we think of the Arab-Israeli problems as a
pyramid naturally we would think that the immediate or urgent
problems form the top of the pyramid and the other less urgent
problems form the middle and the base of the pyramid.

The top problems form
a first category and the rest form a second category. The problems
or issues in category one are naturally more urgent and therefore
have to be tackled first and they include:

1- Future status of Jerusalem

2- Israel's withdrawal to pre-1967 boarders

3- Creation of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip

4- Repatriation of Palestinian refugees

5- Israel's security and normalization of relations

6- Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state

Once these issues are
settled all other issues in the sub-categories ranging from a
gradual normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states
to economic and cultural cooperation and from sharing water
resources to whether the Jews or the Palestinians were the first to
come up with the recipe for humus.

I truly think that
starting from the top and resolving these paramount issues could
finally free the Palestinian and Israeli hands to tackle other
minor issues since both people could finally be assured in the
permanency of a stable and secure environment. Why continuing the
old trends of attempting to unravel layers of minor issues such as
whether the Palestinian Police should carry light arms or no arms
at all instead of creating a permanent security arrangement at the
top then negotiate the matter of the Palestinian police's side arms
later.

I am almost certain
that while Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are directed by the
their superiors to seek mutual solutions to such minor issues their
eyes are focused on the bigger and naturally more sophisticated
matters a head. When those involved in peacemaking and tackling
major obstacles to permanent peace become deadlocked or find
themselves hemmed in by immediate demands and pressures they could
always find inspiration and guidance in their holy scriptures
whether they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim that urge them to
pursue peace no matter how steep are the sacrifices. While the
Muslim holy Quran promotes peace by advising Prophet Muhammad that,
"If the enemy inclines towards peace, do thou incline towards peace
also, and trust in Allah (God)" (Quran ch. 8:61), and the Bible
proclaims, "Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called
sons of God" (Mathew ch. 5:9), in the Psalms of David God commands
him to, "Depart from evil, and do good; Seek peace and pursue it"
(Psalms ch. 34:14).